IBM announces WebSpan, the first Windows Azure alternative

On Tuesday, IBM announced a new Cloud Computing hardware and software solution called WebSpan. Working jointly with another company called Hubspan, this SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform is the very heart of what cloud computing will become — and is basically another version of what Microsoft described with their Windows Azure operating system last October.

Like Azure, WebSpan is designed for businesses to simplify the process of rolling out software and data systems, as well as coordinating data and services between them. And also like Azure, WebSpan is a fee-based service-oriented software environment which automatically scales up/down as real-world needs arise, allowing for the ongoing monthly service fee to be paid directly to IBM (or Microsoft) as their software and hardware are used, but without the up-front maximum capital investment in buying a server platform to support their busiest times. WebSpan (and Azure) will scale automatically, and their customer (the business using their service) will shell out more money the busier things get.

Our clients are asking us for cloud-based platforms that offer robust and comprehensive integration capabilities. These companies are increasingly looking for a flexible solution that provides an easy entry point, delivering rapid and quantifiable business value. WebSpan expands our clients’ choices when implementing connectivity and integration solutions.

While WebSpan does not yet appear to include the full world-encompassing vision Microsoft has for Azure — Microsoft has billed it even as “The operating system of the next 50 years”, describing data coordination between continents, IBM says “WebSpan is a single instance, multi-tenant SaaS integration platform, which enables cost-effective business integration and ease of scalability while optimizing the sharing of resources across partner communities.”

The purpose of WebSpan is to handle the software and business lines through their interfaces in a seamless, integrated manner and with its most similar trait in tact: Just like Azure, WebSpan is designed to scale up and down automatically as needed by running on IBM-owned hardware. Rather than each customer owning their own maximum amount of hardware for the biggest loads the servers would bear, IBM will own the hardware and each customer will pay IBM a fee for the service provided (software, plus using IBM’s hardware).

Microsoft’s Azure model also allows companies to not own the hardware, but similarly to pay an ongoing monthly fee for however much service was provided in a given month. The difference here is: Once you stop paying, you stop having any assets that may be paid for that you can use … even if they’re slower than your competition’s.

With this level of integration, HubSpan’s website says: “WebSpan provides any-to-any integration, which means it works with all systems, protocols, content and applications, whether legacy, on-premise or SaaS-based. WebSpan enables companies to create affordable business community networks and to automate business processes.”

While the idea will undoubtedly be appealing to companies (not having to deal with the hassle and headaches of maintaining your own data centers, software, servers, communication lines, etc.), and whereas we will undoubtedly be seeing this as our web/cloud-based future, this is such a dangerous idea.

I’m only going to focus on one point here in this opinion section, but the list of dangers goes on and on: Huge corporations want to control your data, and your access to it.

With Azure and WebSpan, there will be no control over the hardware or data. In a secure center today, a generic XYZ company could maintain their own data integrity, meaning they could ensure no intruders bypassed their firewalls and accessed critical systems. However, with this kind of fee-for-service design, the software and data does not reside on XYZ-owned servers any longer. In fact, it may not even reside on the same servers throughout the day as large virtualized server farms will roll virtual servers from physical machine to machine as needed.

This allows the IBMs and Microsofts of the world, two $100+ billion companies today, access to all of your data anytime they want. They can mine it for whatever purpose they have in mind, which could relate back to money and power (through selling information mined, or even something devious like corporate espionage, to holding “dirt” over somebody and blackmailing them to do a bidding).

While these things sound awful, Cloud Computing makes them more possible than ever before. And very few people even consider that reality, let alone recognize its probability and extreme potential danger.